Up to 50 people were killed in an attack carried out by suspected Boko Haram Islamists in a northeast Nigeria border town this week, the U.N. said Friday.

The attack on Damasak "killed up to 50 people and forced at least 3,000 to flee for their lives to Diffa region in neighboring Niger," said Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency.

Nigeria and its neighbors vowed to have nearly 3,000 troops on the ground to combat Boko Haram by the start of this month but as the year-end approaches, a regional force has yet to be deployed.

Soldiers were supposed to have been sent to the borders of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria by November 1 and a headquarters set up by November 20, the countries said in early October.

More than 45 people were killed when two female suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowded market in northeast Nigeria on Tuesday, the latest in a wave of such attacks blamed on Boko Haram.

The explosions in the Borno state capital targeted the same Monday Market area where at least 15 people died on July 1 in a blast also thought to have been carried out by the Islamist militants.

Boko Haram has taken over another town in Nigeria's far northeast, a lawmaker, a local government official and a security source said on Tuesday, after militant fighters attacked on market day.

Maina Ma'aji Lawan, who represents northern Borno state in Nigeria's Senate, said the Islamists were in control of Damasak, on the border with neighbouring Niger.

Nigeria's top Islamic leader on Monday accused the military of fleeing when Boko Haram attacks and terrorizing civilians, in the harshest ever criticism from the key cleric, as violence persisted in the northeast. 

A statement from the country's top Muslim body, the JNI, described the military's handling of the five-year Islamist uprising as "unfortunate, worrisome and embarrassing."

Suspected Boko Haram gunmen disguised as traders opened fire Monday at a crowded market in a northeast Nigeria border town, a military officer and a local official said.

It was not yet possible to give a death toll, the senior officer with direct knowledge of the raid told AFP. The shooting began at about 11:00 am (1000 GMT).

Nigeria's main opposition party claimed on Sunday that security agents had ransacked its office in Lagos, arresting workers and seizing documents, in the latest flareup ahead of February elections.

The All Progressives Congress (APC) said 28 workers were arrested during the raid on its data center in Lagos early Saturday, which the party likened to the Watergate burglary in the United States in the 1970s.

Boko Haram gunmen killed 48 fish vendors in Nigeria's restive Borno State, near the border with Chad, the head of the fish traders association told AFP on Sunday.

"Scores of Boko Haram fighters blocked a route linking Nigeria with Chad near the fishing village of Doron Baga on the shores of Lake Chad on Thursday and killed a group of 48 fish traders‎ on their way to Chad to buy fish," Abubakar Gamandi said.

Nigeria's general election is on track to be "volatile and vicious", the International Crisis Group (ICG) said Friday, warning that "an increasingly violent" political climate must be checked to avoid widespread unrest.

The concern came a day after police fired teargas inside parliament, apparently targeting one of the country's most powerful lawmakers, who defected from the ruling party to the opposition last month.

At least 45 people were killed in a suspected Boko Haram attack in northeast Nigeria, officials and witnesses said on Thursday, in the latest violence to hit the restive region.

The attack happened in the village of Azaya Kura in the Mafa area of Borno state on Wednesday, the caretaker chairman of Mafa local government area, Shettima Lawan said, calling it "wicked and despicable".